MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 19

"L' altra vedete ch'ha fatto alla guancia

Della sua palma, sospirando, letto."

--Purgatorio, vii.

When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor,

when the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy

was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon,

born Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to Rome.

In those days the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil

by forty years than it is at present. Travellers did not often carry

full information on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets;

and even the most brilliant English critic of the day mistook the

flower-flushed tomb of the ascended Virgin for an ornamental vase

due to the painter's fancy. Romanticism, which has helped to fill

some dull blanks with love and knowledge, had not yet penetrated

the times with its leaven and entered into everybody's food; it was

fermenting still as a distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain

long-haired German artists at Rome, and the youth of other nations who

worked or idled near them were sometimes caught in the spreading movement.

One fine morning a young man whose hair was not immoderately long,

but abundant and curly, and who was otherwise English in his equipment,

had just turned his back on the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican

and was looking out on the magnificent view of the mountains from

the adjoining round vestibule. He was sufficiently absorbed not

to notice the approach of a dark-eyed, animated German who came up

to him and placing a hand on his shoulder, said with a strong accent,

"Come here, quick! else she will have changed her pose."

Quickness was ready at the call, and the two figures passed lightly

along by the Meleager, towards the hall where the reclining Ariadne,

then called the Cleopatra, lies in the marble voluptuousness

of her beauty, the drapery folding around her with a petal-like

ease and tenderness. They were just in time to see another

figure standing against a pedestal near the reclining marble:

a breathing blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne,

was clad in Quakerish gray drapery; her long cloak, fastened at

the neck, was thrown backward from her arms, and one beautiful

ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing somewhat backward

the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face

around the simply braided dark-brown hair. She was not looking

at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes were

fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor.